Many see a 40 hour work-week, two-day weekend, a two-week annual vacation and a life in retirement after 65 as something their parents did but is now out of reach.  Off-time used to be defined by what it was not: work-time. People's identity was defined through their work. "What do you do?" meant work, not a personal interest or "what do you like to do?"

Coal miner: Work and rest

Much work was hard and taxing, a drudgery which required 8 hours of sleep to recover leaving barely enough time to organize the private life of eating, shopping raising children, or keeping up with the household. Age 65 was just about as long as such a schedule could be sustained. Having fun wasn't part of that schedule, nor was adventure, exploration, continued education or strenuous activity.

Such a binary world of strictly separated work and narrowly defined "leisure" is becoming quickly obsolete for most, even for workers that are still location-bound or work in an environment with a command-structure. For most the demarcation between work and leisure becomes fuzzier all the time; "leisure" has become more fine-grained and interspersed into the work schedule in smaller increments. Leisure now has its own set of demands from lifelong learning to staying fit. One could say work intrudes into leisure in many ways but leisure also intrudes into work. Witness the ping-pong tables and pinball machines at start-ups. Meanwhile leisure (Read entire article here)